The Three Musketeers

“I do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare [as D’Artagnan]. I do say there is none that I love so wholly.”
–Robert Louis Stevenson

“The lasting and universal popularity of The Three Musketeers shows that Dumas, by artlessly expressing his own nature in the persons of his heroes, was responding to that craving for action, strength and generosity which is a fact in all periods and all places.”
–Andreé Maurois

Alexandre Dumas, whose life was as dramatic as the stories he penned, was born on July 24, 1802, in Villers-Cotterêts. He was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, a nobleman and a brilliant general under Napoleon, and Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Labouret. Following his father’s death in 1806, the family faced financial hardship, but his mother ensured Dumas received a private education. Though an indifferent student, he excelled in penmanship. In 1816, he began working as a clerk to support his family.

His interest in theater brought him to Paris in 1822, where he met the renowned tragedian François-Joseph Talma and decided to pursue playwriting. During this time, he fell in love with Catherine Labay, a seamstress, with whom he had a son. Though he had many mistresses, he married only once, but the marriage was short-lived.

While working as a scribe for the duc d’Orléans, Dumas collaborated on his first play, La Chasse et l’amour (The Chase and Love, 1825). His direction for drama became clear after attending a performance of Hamlet in 1827, which inspired him with its depiction of “true passions.”

Dumas achieved instant fame on February 11, 1829, with the premiere of Henri III et sa cour (Henry III and His Court). This play is considered the first French Romantic drama and broke away from the rigid Neoclassical traditions of the time. After a brief involvement in the July Revolution of 1830, Dumas returned to playwriting, producing historical melodramas that captivated audiences. Antony (1831) and La Tour de Nesle (The Tower of Nesle, 1832) are considered significant works of nineteenth-century French theater.

Due to republican sympathies that put him at odds with the new monarch, Louis-Philippe, Dumas traveled. In 1832, he toured Switzerland, documenting his experiences in Impressions de voyage: En Suisse (Travels in Switzerland, 1834-1837), which was the first of many travelogues about his journeys through France, Italy, Russia, and other countries.

Around 1840, Dumas began writing historical romances inspired by French history and Sir Walter Scott. Collaborating with Auguste Maquet, he serialized Le Chevalier d’Harmental in 1842, widely considered his first great novel, blending history, intrigue, adventure, and romance. Their prolific partnership produced many novels, often published serially in Parisian tabloids.

He is best known for the d’Artagnan trilogy: Les trois mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers, 1844), Vingt ans après (Twenty Years After, 1845), and Dix ans plus tard ou le Vicomte de Bragelonne (Ten Years Later; or The Viscount of Bragelonne, 1848-1850). He also wrote the Valois romances, including La Reine Margot (Queen Margot, 1845), La Dame de Monsoreau (The Lady of Monsoreau, 1846), and Les Quarante-cinq (The Forty-Five Guardsmen, 1848). His greatest success, however, is widely considered to be Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo), serialized from 1844 to 1845. Their final collaboration was a tetralogy including Mmoires d’un medecin: Joseph Balsamo (Memoirs of a Physician, 1846-1848).

In 1847, Dumas became an impresario, opening the Théâtre Historique to stage dramatizations of his novels. He also built a lavish home, Le Château de Monte Cristo. However, his theater failed in 1850, leading to bankruptcy. He fled to Belgium to avoid creditors, returning to Paris in 1853. He founded the newspaper Le Mousquetaire and the literary weekly Le Monte Cristo, but his financial struggles continued. In 1858, he traveled to Russia, later publishing accounts of his travels.

The final decade of Dumas’s life was marked by adventure. In 1860, he joined Giuseppe Garibaldi’s cause for Italian independence, spending four years in Naples publishing a bilingual newspaper. He returned to Paris in 1864 and began a relationship with actress Ada Menken, who called him “the king of romance.” His last novel, La Terreur Prussiene (The Prussian Terror), was published in 1867, and his final play, Les Blancs et les Bleus (The Whites and the Blues), premiered in 1869.

Alexandre Dumas died penniless but cheerful on December 5, 1870. His biographer, André Maurois, described him as a figure from his own novels, embodying strength, adroitness, and generosity, a “superb giant” who dominated the nineteenth century with his prolific writing and larger-than-life existence.

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